WARREN ELLIS is a graphic novelist, writer, public speaker and author of the NYT best-selling novel GUN MACHINE.

The Telescope

Published September 23, 2005 by Warren Ellis

So often I’ve wanted to just sit on the roof alone with my thoughts and an old fashioned telescope, the big unwieldy kind with all kinds of lenses and mechanical gears. Someday when I am eccentric and rich, I’ll have a whole house decorated with the theme of “Alice In Wonderland”. There will be old-fashioned astronomy equipment mounted on the roof. I’ll have an unwieldy old telescope and I’ll gaze at the stars. It will have gears and lenses I can turn and adjust. I’ll make notations of my observations in big dusty books. Eventually, the telescope and I will turn inward upon ourselves so many times, we’ll just disappear. For years the children and old people will talk about the lady up the street who spent her fortune on this big crazy house, and then one day she just disappeared… and the only thing missing was the telescope.